“Pain and terror. That’s how He cut us out of quivering flesh – our Master, the Dark Lord...”

His shadow splashed huge against the broken wall. An uneasy whisper flickered round his little audience. He grinned at them, showing off his yellowed tusks.

The noise from the back cell had quietened. She had been screaming since three-meals-past and was weakening; he could hear her sobs. He shifted on his haunches and lowered his voice. “Taller’n towers, He was. We were slaves then. Born by the knife to die by it, we were. When the end came, we died... and He fell.”

“Hungry?” Vigorous nods from his scrawny audience. “Weren’t no hunger then. There was meat for the taking. ’Course, you had to take it. Had to wrench it from the bone, still on its owner, often enough. Still yelling, still fighting, ’cause only the strong survive. Orcish condition, that is. Down in the Deeps where the Master made us, weren’t no cold, no quiet, no stars...”

He sat back. Darkness pooled beyond the flickering fire. Far overhead, starlight leaked through a frozen crack in the vault. All was still.

“Ain’t none of that now,” he said. “He’s gone. The Deeps’re ours.”

The silence had gone on too long. “Hey, Curly,” he said. “Go check out back.”

He didn’t wait for Curly’s footsteps to fade. “There were others, ’course. Dark fiery spirits with burning whips. Wolves bigger’n Orcs, and not all beasts all of the time. Things like bats, but a thousand times bigger, with claws and teeth. Patrolling the Deeps and the Pits and Up Above, minding His business, holding our chains. His knives. Our makers. And here’s the thing.”

He paused.

“When the end came, not all of ’em fell. Some ran. They’re still here in the Deeps with us.”

“Down by the ice river, when it’s snowing and the stars are dark, the wolves go hunting.” He was mostly talking to fill the uneasy quiet now. “Used to be, Othrod’s gang lived south of here. Then a yellow-eyed wolf strolled in on its hind-legs –”

A shadow loomed out of the back cell: Curly, waving urgently. He leapt to his feet.

There was blood everywhere. She was awash with sweat, white as a day-old corpse on the ratty blankets. But her greasy plaits were bunched over her shoulder, clutched in the plump fist of the babe snug in her arms.